Aaron Eckhart will star as a father and husband stricken with grief in the film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire, who has penned the screenplay.

As previously reported, Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman ("The Hours," "Australia," "Moulin Rouge") will star as the wife struggling with the loss of her young son.

Eckhart is known for such films as "Your Friends and Neighbors" and "In the Company of Men." Kidman is producing the picture, to be directed by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, "Shortbus"), according to industry reports.

Lindsay-Abaire is a 2009 Tony Award nominee for writing the book and lyrics to Shrek the Musical.

In the drama with humor, Howie and Becca Corbett's marriage is shaken with the loss of their four-year-old son in a traffic accident. Closure becomes difficult when they are faced with the teen who ran their son down. Becca's flighty sister and opinionated mother (reportedly, Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest) are part of the mix.

The cast is said to also include Giancarlo Esposito, Tammy Blanchard, Jon Tenney, Patricia Kalember, Mike Doyle and Miles Teller. Rabbit Hole, which opened in February 2006 at Manhattan Theatre Club's Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was nominated for a Best Play Tony Award in 2006. For her work in the five-actor drama, Cynthia Nixon won the 2006 Tony as Best Actress in a Play.

Lindsay-Abaire's play represented a stylistic departure for the author of the absurdity-pumped plays Fuddy Meers, Wonder of the World and Kimberly Akimbo.

Rabbit Hole is a more somber, realistic view of relationships, and the world. Some critics praised Rabbit Hole as a crafty, architectural layering of personalities, conflicts and tensions (giving the actors and director Dan Sullivan an exhilarating mountain to climb), but other reviewers said the work wandered into the territory of TV movies.

Since its Broadway life, Rabbit Hole has blossomed in regional theatres.